US Pharm. 2007;32(9):66.

Fee Cuts Raise Physicians' Ire
Pharmacists' professional brethren will finally feel what has been happening to them over the years. As a result of a projected 9.9% physician fee cut in Medicare Part B payments in January, the chairman of the AMA Board of Trustees is predicting that the proposed reimbursement cuts will affect the number of Medicare patients physicians will treat.

According to Cecil B. Wilson, MD, chairman of AMA's Board of Trustees, Medicare doctors are receiving the same payments for their services as in 2001, but the average costs of their medical practices have risen 18% since then. An AMA survey of nearly 9,000 physicians uncovered that if fees were cut by the projected 40% over the next nine years, 77% of the physicians polled said they would limit the number of new Medicare patients, and 68% would limit the number of their established Medicare patients. Other measures they would take would be to refer out complex cases, discontinue nursing home visits, discontinue rural outreach programs, and reduce the size of their staffs.




No Money Headaches
If you think that having money causes more headaches, think again. According to a multicenter study published in the journal Neurology, assuming there is no genetic link, children from families with an annual household income of $90,000 or more had a 50% lower occurrence rate of migraine headaches compared with children from households with an annual income less than $22,500. However, income had no influence on migraines in families with a hereditary predisposition to the condition.

According to Marcelo Bigal, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the results "mandate a search for environmental risk factors associated with low income which increase the one-year period prevalence of migraine." The researchers plan to examine nutrition, emotional and physical stress, and disparities in treatment patterns as potential contributors to migraine.

Policing Sleep Patterns
Researchers attending a recent Associated Professional Sleep Societies Meeting reported that four out of 10 police officers may be working with a variety of sleep problems, including sleep apnea, insomnia, restless legs syndrome, or narcolepsy.

Dr. Shantha Rajaratnam, PhD, of Harvard University surveyed police officers whose average age was 38, 77% of whom were men. Dr. Rajaratnam concluded that "given the large number of officers who screened positive for sleep disorders, sleep disorder screening and treatment programs should be implemented with the aim of improving police officer health, safety and productivity."

Sniffing Out Alzheimer's
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania uncovered that trouble identifying common odors may be a sign of mild cognitive impairment. According to Dr. Robert S. Wilson, PhD, and colleagues, impaired sense of smell was associated with a 15% overall increase in risk for cognitive impairment.

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